Presentation on theme: "Alice."— Presentation transcript:

4 Alice.org Makes it easy to do 3D movies and interactive animationsFun and intuitive programming modelyou can see the objects you are programmingHighly visual programming environmentdon't have to memorize syntaxWhy the name Alice?she's the central character in Lewis Carroll’s classic children's story Alice in Wonderland

5 Alice FREE! http://www.alice.org Load and run a worldNames ending in .a2w are Alice programsa2w is an abbreviation for alice 2 worldTwo kinds of animationsMovie: passive user watches the animationInteractive: active user interacts with keyboard and mouseChapter 1Chapter 2

6 Basic Concepts in AliceVirtual world: an animation is implemented in Alice as a virtual worldObject: basic entity in Alice that has features.Dimensions and directions: each object in Alice hasDimensions: height, width, depthDirections: up, down, forward, back, left, rightCenter of an object: at the center of massObjects can be retrieved fromLocal gallery, orWeb gallery

7 Basic Concepts in Alice (cont)Distance: distance between two objects is measured from the centersLocation: in a 3-D space, described by a triplet (x,y,z). The center of the ground is at (0,0,0)Animation: you develop a set of commands (methods) for each of the object in your world to interact with each other, creating an effect of animation

9 Objects objects In Alice, an object is (usually) visible and ithas a namemay have sub-parts that are also objectshas properties such as width, height, color, locationcan perform methods (actions) on commandhas functions that allow programs to obtain information about the object

19 Alice TechniquesThe mouse is used to approximately position objects in the sceneCamera navigation is used to set the camera point of viewObject drop-down menu used for many things includingresizing objectsmore precisely position objects in the sceneQuad view is used to position one object relative to another object2-D text:

21 The Future: Alice v3.0Been in development for almost a year; will release in 2008.Driven by Caitlin Kelleher’s findings about storytellingmake movies (or videogames)Real JavaAlice v3.0 is a Java IDE, based on eclipsewill see real Java (if you choose)Drag & Drop or type -> it’s up to you!Insanely high production values: as good as real video gamesWe are developing a textbook along with the systemJust as we did with Alice v2.0Wanda Dann, Steve Cooper, Randy Pausch and Don SlaterEA has given us $300,000* and permission to use the characters and animations from “The SimsTM 2” in Alice v3.0

22 The First Public Demo of Alice v3.0 with the SimsTM!This scene was rendered in Alice v3.0